


How Could I Just Sit By

by Dylanobrienisbatman



Series: Blarke [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Caretaking, F/M, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Protective Bellamy, Protectiveness, concerned clarke, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-18
Updated: 2017-09-18
Packaged: 2018-12-31 09:46:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12129789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dylanobrienisbatman/pseuds/Dylanobrienisbatman
Summary: Bellamy gets in a knockdown drag-out bar fight, over Clarke's honour no less, and he's sure she'll be furious. The encounter doesn't go exactly as he expected.





	How Could I Just Sit By

Bellamy was sitting in his living room, on his couch, nursing a huge black eye and what felt like a broken rib. He wasn’t usually one for getting into fights, he more or less avoided conflict now. He was older, a professor at the large state school nearby, he had a reputation to live up too, and a job to keep. He had never been one to sit by while people he… cared for?... were being besmirched, though, and he wasn’t about to start now, especially not when it was abou-

“Bell, can you open the door, I’ve got lots of bags here.” Clarke’s voice rang out from the other side of the door. Fuck. He was hoping she wouldn’t come by this weekend, so he might avoid explaining his swollen face and purple torso, but obviously she had to be annoyingly present in his life. Whatever. He stood, a little too quickly, his ribs protesting, and walked over to the door as gracefully as he could. He opened it, and turned immediately, walking toward his room while she corralled her things through his door. “Wow, thanks for the help asshole.” She snarked, slightly out of breath but full of humour. He couldn’t hide in his room forever, and she obviously came over for a reason, so he grabbed a book to keep up the casual ruse he had going, and walked back into the living room. 

She had her back to him, unloading what looked like an entire art supplies store from the mound of shopping bags on his counter. He had a spare room since Octavia moved out, and had opened it up to her to use as an art studio. That was how their friendship had really started. Octavia had moved in with Lincoln, her boyfriend of almost 4 years, and Clarke had offered him cash to rent the room out as a studio. The situation had seemed like a win-win, he got money to help cover the cost of the place and he didn’t have to actually have a roommate, and Clarke got an art studio that was affordable and in a safe neighbourhood, and separate from her open floor plan loft. It had gone as well as expected for the first couple months. She would come and go as she pleased, the house always smelled a bit like paint and melting plastic for some reason, and every now and then she’d leave a canvas on the wall in his living room that she felt “fit the mood, Bellamy” (always with the exasperation). What he hadn’t expected was for her to start falling asleep on his couch late in the night, and making him breakfast in the mornings when she did, or coming over sometimes just to watch documentaries with him on his couch and pelt him with popcorn and annoying questions in equal measure. And he really hadn’t expected to fall in love with her, with her sunshine hair and ocean blue eyes, her grating sarcasm and annoying need to be right all the time, even when she was wrong, the way sometimes after a long stretch in her studio she would come out with paint on every part of herself but a look of pure joy in her eyes. It had been almost a year now, and sometimes it felt like she was in his apartment more than her own, and it was simultaneously horrible and wonderful all at once. She had spare shampoo, toothpaste, and fluffy blue towels in his bathroom, and had hauled a small dresser into the closet of the room that was now her studio to keep a few changes of clothes, and really the only thing keeping her from living with him entirely was that she didn’t have a bed, but she slept on his couch so often he wasn’t sure that even mattered. 

Her hair was shining in the mid-afternoon sun pouring through the open balcony doors, pulled up in a sloppy bun, whisping down over her shoulders, her floaty floor length dress blowing in the early September breeze, and his heart skipped a beat or five. She turned to look as she heard him walk in the room, at first with the softest look on her face, immediately replaced by one of fear and concern. She dropped everything she was doing, a paint bottle slapping to the ground and shooting dark green paint across the floor, unnoticed by her as she darted across the room to him. She sat him on his coffee table, and fluttered her hands over his bare torso, cataloguing every wince and sharp intake of breath, and turning his face gently in her hands to assess the damage. She hurried off, returning with two separate bags of frozen food, peas and blueberries it looked like, a roll of thick bandages that he was positive didn’t come from his cabinets, and rubbing alcohol, some kind of ointment, medical tape, and cotton. She stood between his legs, putting gentle pressure on his bruises, muttering to herself. He wanted to say something, but she was so endearing like this, so concerned and worried for him, that he couldn’t bear to break the spell. She gently pressed the larger of the two frozen bags onto the largest, already purple bruise, and used the bandages to secure it around his ribs, all the while a look of panic in her eyes. She moved to his face, dabbing at the open cuts on his cheekbone with alcohol soaked cotton, tutting when he hissed as it stung, applying the ointment and securing some ointment soaked cotton to his face with medical tape, and then raising the blueberries to his eye still standing unbearably close. When she had finally stopped moving, she looked at him expectantly. He made a face, like he wasn’t sure what she wanted, and she huffed, annoyed. 

“Bellamy, who the hell did this to you? What happened?!” Her voice was barely above a whisper, soft and almost in tears. He could hear the crack and slight waver as she tried to keep herself steady, pressing the blueberries against the bottom of his eye. 

“It was just a bar fight Clarke, not a big deal.” He wasn’t sure he sounded entirely convincing, and he must have been right, because she scoffed loudly and pulled the blueberries away from his face to check the swelling, looking irritated. He sighed, and looked towards the balcony, avoiding eye contact, and said it. 

“Finn was there, at the bar, and he wa-” 

“FINN DID THIS TO YOU?!?!” She shouted, and it startled the bag of blueberries out of her hand. 

“No,” he said, as she gently replaced it, turning his face back to look at her, “He was talking about you, about how you were so easy, and you ‘gave it up’ to him so fast, and how even after you found out about Raven, and her finding out about you, you were both still ‘fiending’ for it.” She looked furious, her mouth hanging open, but he pressed on, “So I told him to kindly shut the fuck up, and that obviously he spent last April in an alternate universe because Raven had slept with me after she found out about you, and you hadn’t given him the time of day from the minute you found out about her.” He paused the story, for a brief second, “hey could you take the peas off my side is numb, and its starting to burn.” She quickly obliged, and he pressed on. 

“Anyway, Finn left, but some guy Finn had been friends with in college or something heard me, I guess, and came up to me, and started talking about how you were just some slutty girl who couldn’t choose, and that he had heard you were so desperate that you started hooking up with girls after Finn because you couldn’t get enough, and he just kept going on and on and on, and I told him to shut up, like 4 times, but finally he said… something, and I just decked him. He hit the floor, and his friends grabbed me and it was an all-out brawl. I was doing alright, actually, but there were 4 of them and one of me, and they got me on the ground, and one guy got a couple heavy kicks in before the bouncer made it over and broke it up. Hence the ribs.” He motioned to his side, avoiding her eyes still. Clarke had never been a huge fan of people defending her honour, in any way, and he knew she was going to call him an idiot for getting in a fight over something as stupid as some random assholes bullshit about her when she wasn’t even around. 

She had her one hand covering his large bruised ribs, trying to warm the skin a little before replacing the peas, and the other holding the blueberries up to his eye, and the look on her face was one he couldn’t say he’d ever seen before. He was waiting for her to berate him, to yell or at least scold him, but she just seemed stunned. They sat in silence for a minute, until she barely whispered, “what did he say?” 

“what?” he was confused. Maybe it was the head trauma. 

“Before you decked him, you said he said… ‘something’, but you had been just telling him to shove off before that. What did he say that put you over the edge?” She seemed almost dazed, and his heart was melting. 

“He made some comment about how I should just give it to you, so I could get over being your little bitch, and you might finally stop being such a whore if someone were to just make you take it like a man.” He pieced the words together slowly, hating the way they sounded coming from his own mouth even more than he had hated them the night before. Her eyes grew wide, the size of dinner plates, and she was frozen in place. 

“I know,” he said quickly, “you don’t like people defending your honour or whatever, but I couldn’t just sit there and let him say shit like that about you, not when…” he stopped. She hadn’t moved her hands, but her eyes were flitting between his and his lips and she was leaning in just a little, stepping closer to him. He had to look up slightly to look at her face, and he kept his hands glued to his own thighs because raising them just a few inches would put them on her hips. She was so close, so close now he could smell her toothpaste on her breathe and feel the warmth radiating off her body. He sat perfectly still when she set the frozen foods on the table, letting both hands cup his face, running her thumb gently over the bruise, and then, in the most surprising twist of his entire life, she kissed him. She slid her hands back into his hair, and pressed her lips to his, first soft, and then with an almost heart breaking amount of urgency. He let his hands slide up her back, pulling her into him, wrapping his arms around her and holding her close. The kiss was soft, and chaste, closed mouthed and all warm pressure, but if you asked him 10 years later what the best kiss of his whole life was, he would say that one. She pulled back just slightly, brushing the tip of her nose against his. 

“I thought you’d be upset with me.” He whispered, still holding her close. He waited for some level of snark, for some sarcastic retort, but instead, she smiled, soft and warm, pressed her lips to his gently again, and said, “I’m in love with you, Bellamy Blake.” 

His heart stuttered in his chest, and his arms gripped her tighter, pulling her as close as he could, pressing his lips to hers again, coaxing hers open with his tongue, pulling a deep, languid kiss out of her. He heard her sigh softly into him, and slid one arm up between them to cup her chin, holding her lightly into the kiss. 

“I was going to say, I couldn’t let him say all of that when I was in love with you.” He finished, and she pressed in for another kiss, failing slightly because her grin made it hard to capture her lips in his own. They stayed there, sitting and standing, frozen food melting on the table, chasing lips back and forth for what somehow felt like years, but also seemed to short. She helped him stand, and walked him backwards to his room, collapsing him on his bed and settling gingerly above him. She had a halo of golden hair, and ocean blue eyes, and her lips were pink and swollen from kissing, and she loved him.  
_________

A year later, when he asked her to marry him in their living room, sitting on the table with her standing between his legs, this time helping make sure his glasses looked even on his nose, she took his glasses off gently, setting them on the spot where the frozen blueberries had stained the wood of the table, and pulled him in for the second best kiss of his whole life, nodding yes the entire time.

**Author's Note:**

> come hang with me on [Tumblr](http://dylanobrienisbatman.tumblr.com) or [Tumblr](http://lindsey-debnam-carey.tumblr.com), whichever you prefer! - B


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